Looks like they felt the need to update the article, still claiming that the y-o-y reduction is significant and that R&D should go up dramatically when new silicon needs to go out.
I've personally never experienced that: when getting closer and closer to tape-out, companies simply start to put more pressure on employees and social life may go away completely, but that's about it. It's not as if much more can be done anyway (see also:
Brooks's Law).
Wrt to the y-o-y reduction in the last quarter, according to the 10Q:
The majority of the decrease, or $9.9 million, was attributable to reductions in stock-based compensation expense related to a decrease in on-going vesting of equity awards due to the cancellation of stock options in March 2009 pursuant to a tender offer.
Going from $212M to $197M, that leaves a whopping $6M in real y-o-y R&D reduction, further explained in the 10Q: basically good old fashioned cost control during lean times. (AMD, HP and my company can't be the only one where salaries, bonuses and other perks have been cut across the board.)
The article also ignores an increase of $5M between last quarter and the quarter before, coincidentally exactly the quarter where these costly tape-outs could have been expected. Bringing new chips up to production doesn't increase R&D costs dramatically, unless you're a startup that needs to buy/lease tons of lab equipment. Yes, there's tape-out costs, but that's by far the biggest part and the $5M more than compensates for that.
In his forum, Charlie brings up additional costs, such as additional compute costs (when you're close to taping out???) and overtime payment (I don't know if I have to laugh or cry.)
The 'journalist' of that article must have been paid real money for this...